


Future and Past

by Blacknovelist



Series: Heroes of Time [4]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time & Explorers of Darkness & Explorers of Sky, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Eevee!Ochako, Lucario!All Might, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time & Explorers of Darkness & Explorers of Sky Spoilers, Riolu!Izuku, Totodile!Tenya, forgot i could do that!, it's gonna start off bleakish before it gets nicer lads, it's really not that bad but y'know, it's time for some Adventures In A Really Bad Future! :D, rather more character-study-ish than anything tbh, rating is mostly caution and maybe anticipation for the future
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26786272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blacknovelist/pseuds/Blacknovelist
Summary: Shigaraki tried to drag one of his foes down into the future that shouldn’t be. Ochako and Tenya refused to let their teammate go without a fight. Toshinori followed to save them. Izuku realized just how far the rabbit hole his history really went.The four adventurers escape, and try to pick up the pieces.
Relationships: Iida Tenya & Midoriya Izuku, Iida Tenya & Midoriya Izuku & Uraraka Ochako, Iida Tenya & Uraraka Ochako, Midoriya Izuku & Uraraka Ochako, Midoriya Izuku & Yagi Toshinori | All Might, listen everyone's pals okay
Series: Heroes of Time [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/928365
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	1. Unnerve Part 1 - Shelter

Izuku hadn’t realized just how much it took out of him to live in a world crafted to be both utterly alien and all he knows. Not until he took his first steps out into this ruined world. Like weights he’d gotten used to, like a curtain sheer enough to look through, like words he knew by heart but could never commit to tongue without the pages there in front of him: he’d laid eye and foot out on the darkened path and felt these forbidden, constant things fall away. Something about this place puts memory in his muscles, and when his friends stumbled on pathways suspended in nothing he reached out and helped carry them along like nothing.

But he still looks to the treetops and expects green, still glances for the moon and finds black. He slips his senses in and out all at once and doesn’t expect it when all but Ochako’s pinks and Tenya’s blues and Toshinori’s golds disappear beneath an aura-less veneer. An unremembered lifetime clashes with drops of vibrant memory, and the ache in his chest comes from more than the injuries and stresses of escape. 

He shouldn’t think about it, really, but he can’t stop either. His eyes slip shut but his mind turns, unbidden, to the beacon at the edge of their hole-in-the-wall camp. Through the shadows of worry and doubt flickering at the edges, All Might remains the steadfast, unbending explorer he first had been introduced to Izuku as. That’s not all he’s supposed to be, though. They all know that now.

Was Toshinori made of these same colors, in the future that was Izuku’s past? Did the silhouette that Izuku senses change in more than just shape? Despite the nostalgia and deja vu that overtakes him no old memories rise up from wherever they fell when he landed in Treasure Town, so there’s no way to tell. Not really.

Few words have passed between them since they fled Shigaraki and his gang, but Tenya perks up now. “All Might, sir?”

Toshinori turns. “Yes, young Tenya?”

“Where are we going?”

“To meet an old friend of mine.” He spares one last look down the path, both ways, before taking a seat across from the trio. “She’s… the one who kicked things off the first time, in a manner of speaking. We should be able to use the same means to get home again.”

“So this really is the future.” Ochako sniffs. “It’s so cold.”

“I thought we stopped the Paralysis,” Tenya murmurs. “We found the gears, and if we’re returning to the past we should’ve been able to— unless something stops us? But even so, the others-” He stops abruptly and shakes his head. Toshinori’s shoulders droop.

“Try not to concern yourselves with technicalities like that,” he says, gaze falling away. “The nature of time is… difficult. It’d be best if I didn’t get into it right now, but know that success in the past takes time — though perhaps in a different sense than we’re used to — to take effect here in any ways we can actually see. It’s impossible to know what happened — or what will happen. There’s the chance of failure, yes… but there’s still always the chance for success.”

Izuku opens his eyes, replaces blazes of color with fur and scale. “It’s not over until it’s over.” His friends jolt — he hasn’t spoken since their escape. Toshinori, too, jerks and looks at him, and he doesn’t blink, or flinch, or look away. “Right? We have to keep trying until the end.”

Stunned isn’t the right word, for the expression on Toshinori’s face, pinched eyes and mouth slightly ajar. It’s a look so similar to the one he gave Shigaraki, once he’d realized who else was locked in the cage with him. It’s a look that couldn’t be more different if he tried. While Tenya and Ochako voice their agreements and lean in, all gentle heat, Izuku grasps at his thoughts and tries to understand a gaze he knows, in that part of his heart that tells him this bleak place is home just as surely as it clings to memories of the sun, he should recognize but simply can’t.

“Yes,” says Toshinori eventually. The chaos of his aura settles. “For each other, for those we’ll leave behind, for those already left behind us. We keep on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all, it's me again. I'm sorta back!
> 
> I've been sitting on this - and a few other parts - for a few months now when I was writing for April's camp nanowrimo, and it's been at last long enough that I no longer despise it! So it's posting time. They're really, seriously just little studies and things tbh, but I like them enough that I might as well let them loose. 
> 
> I actually have like, semi-done timeline notes and a whole bunch of prompts laid out for me and all sorts of stuff for this AU still (though I haven't finished finalizing all the pokemon folks are, technically) so I mean. It'll take ten million years, but I swear i'll either keep writing in this universe or drop my notes so everyone can, idk. Swing off them? Do what you want, lads, I just wanna know when you write things inspired by it all. 
> 
> ANYWAY! I like this AU. I'm glad to be in the sandbox even if it's not super often. Feel free to ask or chatter about it with me [here on tumblr](https://blacknovelist.tumblr.com)! (Or ask for my discord privately, which I don't mind giving out - I just get antsy when it's super out in the open public)
> 
> The rest of what's already written will probably be dropped sometime this weekend. It's not much, but I hope you enjoy. And thank you for sticking around, or reading for the first time if you're new! <3


	2. Unnerve 2 - sky

The first thing Ochako notices is the cold. It slips beneath her fur and battles against the dregs of adrenaline from their mad dash out of Shigaraki’s stronghold. It isn’t enough to keep sleep from her though, not really — and neither is the hard rock she lies down upon, between the steady warmth of her dozing friends. Countless childhood nights of seeking out strange places to sleep, a game to prepare herself for the expected rough lifestyle of an explorer, make sure of that. All Might keeps watch, eyes shut and legs crossed in meditation while honed instincts spread out. If anything that means them harm comes anywhere close, they’ll be long gone.

Was that a trick he’d picked up before he came and became the legendary hero of her childhood? No, it couldn’t be. The last he set foot in this darkened place, he’d been human, not lucario.

Realization kicks her in the chest, not for the first time. All Might and Izuku, so vibrant and alive. They both come from this awful, inevitable place. Ochako remembers countless late nights in their guild room, soft straw against brown fur, her tail just long enough to touch the dirt floors, Tenya and Izuku across from her. Moonlight painted the room silver while they whispered dreams, ideas, their hearts and souls into the space between them, so sure in the rightness and solidity of the world, of the things to come. So many theories, on the places Izuku could’ve been from, what he might have seen. If only they knew.

Her gaze roves up and out in search of that same speckled sky. It hits her, far too late, that the sight she seeks only exists in the memories of a beloved few. Those born to this world don’t know anything but a hollow space and slate-colored forests and stone-rivers that one might even be able to walk across. Should the guild fall, should the three of them fail, this will be all they have to look forward to.

How far off are they, from the past that was their present? Would anyone remember the names of the Plus Ultra guild, those who dwelled in its halls, the one who established it in the first place? Was that knowledge lost along with the clouds?

She tries to envision it. To know only the paralyzed timeless future, the struggle of survival, the frantic search for the disjointed remains of a sunlit past. To be raised on only the stories of a place better than this one, impossible in that it had once upon a time been the norm. Long treks to discover the time gear’s locations, endless sessions of planning and strategy and fear between respites like this, with only the patterns of the body to keep track of the hours that might have passed. She pushes the last few hours to the forefront of her mind. Then she pulls on memories — the smiles of friends, the tang of the ocean, her parents curled around her at home — and views them through fresh and filtered eyes.

Whatever she might have hoped for — clarity, maybe? Some new understanding? — doesn’t come, and instead her chest twists with grief. Ochako leans into her teammates on either side of her and doesn’t stop the tears.

The first thing Ochako notices is the cold. It slips beneath her fur and battles against the dregs of adrenaline from their mad dash out of Shigaraki’s stronghold. It isn’t enough to keep sleep from her though, not really — and neither is the hard rock she lies down upon, between the steady warmth of her dozing friends. Countless childhood nights of seeking out strange places to sleep, a game to prepare herself for the expected rough lifestyle of an explorer, make sure of that. All Might keeps watch, eyes shut and legs crossed in meditation while honed instincts spread out. If anything that means them harm comes anywhere close, they’ll be long gone.

Was that a trick he’d picked up before he came and became the legendary hero of her childhood? No, it couldn’t be. The last he set foot in this darkened place, he’d been human, not lucario.

Realization kicks her in the chest, not for the first time. All Might and Izuku, so vibrant and alive. They both come from this awful, inevitable place. Ochako remembers countless late nights in their guild room, soft straw against brown fur, her tail just long enough to touch the dirt floors, Tenya and Izuku across from her. Moonlight painted the room silver while they whispered dreams, ideas, their hearts and souls into the space between them, so sure in the rightness and solidity of the world, of the things to come. So many theories, on the places Izuku could’ve been from, what he might have seen. If only they knew.

Her gaze roves up and out in search of that same speckled sky. It hits her, far too late, that the sight she seeks only exists in the memories of a beloved few. Those born to this world don’t know anything but a hollow space and slate-colored forests and stone-rivers that one might even be able to walk across. Should the guild fall, should the three of them fail, this will be all they have to look forward to.

How far off are they, from the past that was their present? Would anyone remember the names of the Plus Ultra guild, those who dwelled in its halls, the one who established it in the first place? Was that knowledge lost along with the clouds?

She tries to envision it. To know only the paralyzed timeless future, the struggle of survival, the frantic search for the disjointed remains of a sunlit past. To be raised on only the stories of a place better than this one, impossible in that it had once upon a time been the norm. Long treks to discover the time gear’s locations, endless sessions of planning and strategy and fear between respites like this, with only the patterns of the body to keep track of the hours that might have passed. She pushes the last few hours to the forefront of her mind. Then she pulls on memories — the smiles of friends, the tang of the ocean, her parents curled around her at home — and views them through fresh and filtered eyes.

Whatever she might have hoped for — clarity, maybe? Some new understanding? — doesn’t come, and instead her chest twists with grief. Ochako leans into her teammates on either side of her and doesn’t stop the tears. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not 100% on just dropping this just 'cause I'm not used to posting things that are so small. Maybe I'll do some bridging/in-between chapters or add to it in the future? idk. But I think it's not a bad thing to be less conscientious about what I'm posting as far as wordcounts go - writing is writing is writing, and content is usually a good thing.
> 
> Anyway I think about the inherent tragedy of being from the paralyzed future/realizing that this is the place from which the people you love were made in a lot and it's probably very obvious at this point.


End file.
